By: Thomas Degen, Senior Solutions Architect

You know your company’s processes, you know your company’s major IT tools executing these processes, but what are the cornerstones around the systems responsible for ERP, CRM, workflow, BI and reporting when transactions involve multiple systems as part of the established Order-to-Cash process? What happens when an exception has halted regular processing in one of the involved SAP, IBM, Oracle or Microsoft application services? Do you receive a transaction alert in time to react without losing a potential opportunity?

While “experts” can try to manage and monitor these systems, end-to-end service-level agreement (SLA) Management requires a different approach and expertise. You must be aware of your agreed SLAs and “unobtrusively” monitor them with the right tool(s) with a reasonable operational expenditure, and of course, communicate properly with the correct channels in time to avoid dissatisfaction, disinformation and disillusion.

Energy utilities struggle to see a complete, end-to-end view and monitor critical customer service processes since such processes span multiple systems, such as customer service (CRM), service provisioning, billing, etc. This leaves utilities unable to take real-time corrective action before the customer experience is impacted, which can potentially result in the loss of millions of dollars due to increased customer service costs and customer churn.

Most large companies tend to regard Customer Experience Management (CEM) as the technology to organize and synchronize business processes for sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. I’ve now realized that is the purpose of a traditional CRM solution. Customer Experience Management is used to enhance a customer’s experience at every touch-point.